Thursday, May 11, 2017

Taking "missing the point" to a whole new level

It's a real struggle to keep upright in the maelstrom of cluelessness that swirls around Donald Trump. He's like a black hole, sucking in all facts and reason beyond his event horizon, never to be seen again, leaving behind an accretion disk of chaos and contradiction. It's hard to know where to begin to attack this monster. But you've gotta start somewhere, and this seems like as good a place as any:

House Speaker Paul D. Ryan has been unusually silent over the firing of FBI Director James B. Comey, but when he shared his views late Wednesday on Fox News, he stood by President Trump's decision.

Ryan acknowledged the dismissal "was no small thing," but he joined others in the party who have split from those more troubled by the abrupt firing, which stunned Washington amid the investigation of the Trump campaign's possible ties to Russian meddling in the 2016 election.

The speaker joined Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell in brushing back calls for an independent investigation, saying the ongoing congressional and federal reviews were sufficient.

"I think the truth is James Comey, who is a worthwhile and dedicated public servant, I think he had just basically lost the confidence of a lot of Republicans and a lot of Democrats based upon his conduct, his actions, and some of the comments that he made," Ryan said. "Most importantly, he lost the confidence of the president, and it is entirely within the president's role and authority to relieve him, and that's what he did." [Emphasis added.]

Well, of course he lost the confidence of the president! He was investigating the president for potentially serious crimes, possibly even treason against the United States. Archibald Cox lost Richard Nixon's confidence for similar reasons.

Yes, it's true that the circumstances here are not exactly the same as the Saturday Night Massacre. History never repeats itself exactly. (For one thing, Richard Nixon was never suspected of treason.) But the circumstantial evidence that Trump fired Comey to stop the Russia investigation is pretty overwhelming. Whether Trump colluded with the Russians or not, that anyone, Republican or Democrat, would support the president in firing the FBI director to squash an active investigation into the president himself is a threat to democracy and the rule of law.

15 comments:

I have heard it said that in tyrannies, everyone is guilty all the time and the law is merely selectively enforced. Unless your eyes are open, you think that the law is being enforced as best it can, given limited resources. The blinded need only be those who can do something about it; the rest can be transparently screwed.

The situation here seems to me that Comey did screw up (even if it were a no-win scenario) back in November 2016, and Trump was just waiting for an opportune time to fire him. I should think the criticism should be that Trump did not fire him sooner. It's not like what Comey did just came to light (truly or artificially).

Well, that's the key thing, isn't it? What made that moment "opportune"? If the reason for firing him was his screwup in November, why not fire him on day 1?

As I noted in the OP, there is pretty overwhelming circumstantial evidence that the reason for firing Comey was not his November screwup, but rather his refusal to swear fealty to Trump and drop the Russia investigation. In fact, a few days after I wrote the OP, Trump *admitted on the record* that this was part of his motivation! (Good lord, the man is truly an idiot!) Yes, Comey screwed up in November. But there's a yuuuuge difference between firing someone shortly after they've committed a screwup that swung an election in your favor, and waiting until shortly after you've improperly asked them to drop an investigation into you and they refused.

But are we willing to entertain the thought that we, as a nation, engage in that practice I described? Or do we want to bracket it off to Trump and a few corrupt politicians (or maybe, just those in one of the political parties)?

Oh, absolutely, yes. That was my whole point. The problem is not and never has been Donald Trump. He has been absolutely straight with us from the beginning. None of what is happening should come as a surprise to anyone.

The problem is all of the people who continue to support him, from the Republican leadership all the way down to ordinary citizens who continue in the tens of millions to say they approve of his performance. Trump's approval rating is at a historical low of 38%, but that still means that 76 million eligible voters approve of his performance. *Those* people are the real problem.

> Luke: I have heard it said that in tyrannies, everyone is guilty all the time and the law is merely selectively enforced. Unless your eyes are open, you think that the law is being enforced as best it can, given limited resources. The blinded need only be those who can do something about it; the rest can be transparently screwed.

—to Republicans, or Trump voters/​supporters?

Let me remind you that improperly characterizing a problem can prevent you from solving it. If in fact the cause of the above practice is much longer-term and bipartisan, then the way you'd go about fixing it would be different than if it were localizable (at least to a great extent) to Republicans/​Trump voters/​Trump supporters.

I don't know what you mean by "do I want to localize that practice." The fact of the matter is that the president is a Republican, his supporters are overwhelmingly Republican, and Republicans have complete control of the government. The Republicans could remove the president from office tomorrow if they chose to. Under those circumstances it is not unfair to assign the blame for whatever problems result from the president's actions to the Republicans.

Apart from Trump's staggering incompetence, one must not lose sight of the fact that there is a lot of evidence that he has committed real crimes. Not bogus give-the-tyrannical-government-an-excuse-to-imprison-anyone crimes or tin-foil-hat-conspiracy-theory crimes but actual crimes that all reasonable people agree are in fact crimes: obstruction of justice. Witness tampering. Even treason, if the underlying allegations of collusion with the Russians turn out to be true. There can be no reasonable objection to conducting a thorough independent investigation into whether or not the president has in fact committed those crimes, and yet Paul Ryan was trying to defend the president's firing of Comey and imply that no investigation is warranted. Comey had "lost the president's confidence" and so firing him was OK.

Well, no, it's not OK, notwithstanding that the FBI director serves at the pleasure of the president. The structure of our government is based on some unwritten assumptions, one of which is that the president is not a crook. When the president turns out to be a crook that causes real problems that require people to start thinking outside a strict reading of the law and go back to basics: this is supposed to be a government of the people, by the people, and for the people. The people have a lot of power, including the power to install and maintain a crook as president. But I like to think that is not what a majority, or even a plurality, of the American people actually want.

> I don't know what you mean by "do I want to localize that practice."

Certain conditions are required for that practice to exist. Certain conditions are required for it to strengthen. I was asking whether most of these conditions can be localized to [the actions/​inactions of] Republicans/​Trump voters/​Trump supporters, or whether they perhaps pervade our entire country, whether they perhaps reach back for decades, and did not just pop up out of nowhere.

In other words, to quote Robert Reich during his 2017-04-27 Galante Lecture at UCSF:

>> If Donald Trump were impeached, there would be another Donald Trump.

Do you believe this to be true, or false? If you believe it to be true, how do we trace those causal chains backward, so we attribute [moral] responsibility appropriately, instead of risking the egregious error of scapegoating?

>> If Donald Trump were impeached, there would be another Donald Trump.

> Do you believe this to be true, or false?

True. In fact, I think we're fortunate that we got Trump and not someone more competent. It's quite possible that Trump's incompetence is all that stands between us and total disaster.

> If you believe it to be true, how do we trace those causal chains backward, so we attribute [moral] responsibility appropriately, instead of risking the egregious error of scapegoating?

That depends on what you mean by "tracing the causal chain backwards." If you mean in the immediate situation then it's not hard: Trump is in office because 62,979,879 people voted for him, and he remains in office as long as at least 218 Congressmen and 41 Senators support him. It's as simple as that.

If you mean the historical reason that so many people support an incompetent treasonous megalomaniac, that's a much more difficult question to answer. The situation we face today goes all the way back to the founding of the Republic. Volumes have been written about it. It's not the sort of thing you can address in a blog comment.

I'm curious; do you think there are enough people out there trying to solve this problem who have the requisite wisdom, competence, and connections to have even a remote shot at doing so? I find your willingness to be rigorously scientific to be exceedingly rare; perhaps it could help in this domain—as long as you're ok with studies of humans being inextricably value-laden.

I think the founders tried to design a system that would force the extremes towards the middle. It worked pretty well for about 200 years. (Actually, given the dysfunction in Congress and the White House one could say it's still working.)

> I'm curious; do you think there are enough people out there trying to solve this problem who have the requisite wisdom, competence, and connections to have even a remote shot at doing so?

I don't know. But it's an experiment we have no choice but to conduct so one way or the other we will find out.

> But it's an experiment we have no choice but to conduct so one way or the other we will find out.

Actually, there seems to be a lot of contingency as to what will happen. People like you and me can get involved or not; we can employ science or not. Are you aware of stuff like Nina Eliasoph's Avoiding Politics: How Americans Produce Apathy in Everyday Life? There seem to be quite a few mechanisms at play to disincentivize people like you and me from deeply engaging. Our choices really matter. The future is in our hands.

Hmmm, I've meant to cover diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment plan. And also to gently nudge you away from complaining too much about Trump in particular, lest your time be squandered and your opportunity to change things for the better be unnecessarily limited. :-)

Ah. Well, you may notice that this post was not actually complaining about Trump, it was complaining about Paul Ryan. And half of it was lifted from from the LA Times (which I notice has pulled the rug out from under me by changing the content at the URL I linked to. Hmmm....) so I didn't really put a lot of time into it. The last time I wrote directly about Trump was back in March. So I think you can stop worrying :-)

(In fact, you may notice that I haven't really been blogging much at all lately. That is in no small measure because of what I'm doing on the side to try to help fix things.)